


Wild World

by logxnsworld



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mild Language, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-07-27 10:50:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20044771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/logxnsworld/pseuds/logxnsworld
Summary: "After being radio-silent for almost three years, Cabeswater (stylized as CΔBESWΔTER) destroyed the Alt Rock charts earlier this year with their single "Good Grief."ORA series of articles written by Helen Gansey about Ronan, Adam, Gansey, Blue, and Noah being Bastille.





	1. PART I

**Author's Note:**

> All songs are real and belong to Bastille. Songs are taken from the album "Wild World."

**Cabeswater Announces New “Cinematic” Music Video Series**

_ by Helen Gansey _

_ Published 20 December 2016, 8:15 PM _

After being radio-silent for almost three years, Cabeswater (stylized as CΔBESWΔTER) destroyed the Alt Rock charts earlier this year with their single "Good Grief." This reemergence was accompanied with a music video that contains the only video proof that Ronan Lynch can smile. Fans waited in anticipation for their next album, and Cabeswater did not disappoint, releasing "Wild World" a few months ago. 

Yesterday, Cabeswater's front-runners Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch announced that they would be creating a cinematic music video series via the band's various social medias and an interview. 

Adam Parrish, the lead singer of Cabeswater, explained their choice by saying, "Cinematic music videos are my favorite. It's awesome to see how the songs can come together in a story, and how they enrich the story. There's not quite anything like it."

I was able to haggle my brother (Richard Gansey, simply known as “Gansey,” Cabeswater’s bassist) into getting me a backstage pass to some shootings of their various videos, get an inside look on the story, and even get a few quotes from the genius behind Cabeswater's lyrics, the gruff and broody Ronan Lynch himself.

The next article will be a series of amalgamations of summaries, quotes from the people on set, and some of my own commentary. The series will contain spoilers for the videos. You’ll be able to find them when they come out, on Cabeswater’s YouTube channel.

**“The Raven Boys,” Cabeswater’s Cinematic Video Series: An Analysis**

_ by Helen Gansey _

_ Published 27 February 2018, 9:45 PM _

_ *Note: Ronan Lynch has a slight problem with swearing. The words are mostly censored.* _

After a long year, the entirety of Cabeswater’s video series “The Raven Boys” is fully released. When asked about the name, Blue Sargent, the band’s drummer, said “The Raven Boys was their name before I came along. I refused to let them keep it the same, but I guess the boys are still partial to it.” This article is structured like a series of entries. Each entry is marked with the song and the date the video was released. 

In the video descriptions, many of the videos contain trigger warnings for violence, mentioned/implied child abuse, and some sexual content, so keep that in mind.

God, this took way too long.

**Video 1: The Currents**

_ 14 January 2017 _

The series starts off with a music video of the 2nd track off the album, "The Currents." When asked about why they chose the 2nd song, Ronan said "we didn't think of a order when we put out Wild World. We just went "hey, these sound good next to each other so why the f*ck not." Adam added to this statement by saying "we didn't want to make another video of Good Grief. The video it's got is a nice change of pace from what our other videos have been. Don't fix what ain't broke, as they say."

"The Currents" is, in all purposes, a prologue of sorts. It introduces each of the band members in their situations. Gansey, the bassist, is a rich heir to a business. Blue, the drummer, is a daughter of psychics. Noah, the pianist, is their elusive friend who doesn't quite seem completely human. Ronan, the guitarist, is living with his two brothers and a comatose mother. Adam, the lead singer, is stuck in a trailer park with an abusive father and absent mother. The video sets up their situations beautifully, including shots of Adam, Noah, Ronan and Gansey attending a fancy private school, and Blue working at the local pizza parlor that the others frequent. The video is also set in Blue’s scenic hometown of Monterey, Virgina. It’s population is only around 200, and had many hiking trails around, which the director, Henry Cheng, described as “the ideal spot for this story to take place.”

The town, while scenic, was enjoyed by everyone but Gansey and Ronan. Gansey said that “the dirt got everywhere when we filmed outside.” Ronan claimed “it was dusty as f*ck. I have no f*cking clue how [Blue] lived here.” 

The group has a few limited interactions in “The Currents,” but the ones who seem to have an instant connection are Ronan and Adam. I asked them about it, and all Ronan did was grin at me and tell me I was a “nosy f*ck.”

**Video 2: Glory**

_ 29 February 2017 _

This connection is expanded upon in “Glory,” the next video. The video begins with a small scene, with no music whatsoever. The scene shows Blue talking to Adam, Gansey, Ronan and Noah. Gansey goes on and on about how Blue should join the four of them in looking around in the forest. Adam complains, claiming “[he] never agreed to this.” Ronan agrees with Adam, saying “it’s just a bunch of bullshit, Dick.” Gansey retorts with a “fine, if you don’t want to do something with me, maybe you two should just go off and do something on your own.” 

Ronan grins wickedly and tells Gansey that’s exactly what they’ll do, and proceeds to drag Adam out of the pizza parlor. “Are they always like that?” Blue asked. “Pretty much,” Noah quipped. The music underscored a portion of that scene, and the lyrics kick in as the camera follows Adam and Ronan around town. This is the first video that includes the traditional “singing,” in which the singer mouths the lyrics while filming.

The video also includes what Gansey, Blue, and Noah get up to, which is mostly just walking through the forest for something that they never find. At the end, Gansey and Blue are asleep, and Noah is walking around. Another scene begins as soon as the ending instrumentals kick in. Ronan is dropping Adam off at home. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you off closer to your house?” “I’m fine, Ronan.” Adam exits the car, and makes his way to his house. He enters as quietly as possible, but it’s still not enough. His dad, a burly man, picks himself up off of the couch, demanding to know where Adam was. When Adam says that he was with a friend, his dad begins yelling. Adam immediately runs to his room, and his dad throws his beer bottle at Adam’s door as it closes. His dad grumbles, and sits down on the couch. Adam and Ronan are seen collapsing into bed.

Adam cited this scene as the hardest. “It sent me back to when I was 15,” Adam said. “It’s been years, but it really sent my brain down a dark path when I had to feel like that all over again. [The actor who played Adam’s dad] was really nice. He apologized hundreds of times any time we filmed.” According to Adam, he pressed charges against his actual dad when he was 16, and emancipated himself shortly after.

He said, “Ronan went to my school. We weren’t quite as close as we are now, but we were still pretty close. My father was fed up with me coming home so late, and he was so drunk that he decided to meet me on the porch and throw some fists.” Ronan smirked wickedly as he said, “Adam had told me about his dad, and so I followed this idiot to his house and caught his f*ck-sack of a dad beating up on him. Boom. Evidence.” “He took it to a lawyer that day,” Adam said, “Even though it was 9 pm.”

I personally thanked Adam for his honesty and willingness to tell a story, even if it was painful. “This could help people,” Adam replied. “I want people who are in that situation to know that they aren’t alone. I sure as hell didn’t, and it kept me there longer.”

**Video 3: Blame**

_ 10 March 2017 _

After the two prologue-like videos, “Blame” finally dives into the story. We find the five protagonists in dreams.

Gansey sees glimpses of a sword-wielding king, Adam sees flashes of a woman with glowing green eyes and matching green mist coming from her hands. Noah is simply walking around the forest. Ronan is trapped in a room of darkness. Blue sees flashes of a king and his strange court, but through someone else’s eyes. Ronan discovers that he can summon things from the darkness by sticking his hand into it and pulling it away. Adam sees himself using the green mist, and Gansey sees himself learning how to wield a sword.

They wake up, and Ronan finds the things he pulled out of the darkness sitting in his lap. Adam can suddenly use this green mist, which is something akin to magic, and Gansey can wield a sword.

Of the entire album, Blame is one of the three songs that are under 3 minutes, with a runtime of 2:56. The other two are Two Evils (2:46) and Oil on Water (2:59). Adam said that Blame took the least amount of time out of all of the videos.

While it is technically the first “chapter” of the story, it’s not a long one.

**Video 4: Snakes**

_ 19 April 2017 _

“Snakes” delves into why the group was having dreams about people they’ve never seen before. Gansey hopes that whatever he was looking for in the forest will help the group, and eventually convinces them to look for it. The five venture into the forest, and they find a stone embedded into the ground. Ronan and Gansey pull it up, and discover that a phrase is carved on it.

The stone reads “Y brenin, y consuriwr, y breuddwydiwr, y seicig, yr ysbryd. Bydd y llys yn byw.” Ronan had held up the stone for me, and Gansey said “It says ‘The King, the magician, the dreamer, the psychic, the spirit. The court will live.’” When the five unearth the stone, a wave of light passes over the group. A deep voice echoes in their ears, repeating the phrase. The camera focuses on one person at a time, and their eyes glow in an unnatural color.

“Y brenin,” Gansey with purple eyes, “Y consuriwir,” Adam with green eyes, “Y breuddwydir,” Ronan with red eyes, “y seicig,” Blue with blue eyes, “Yr ysbryd,” Noah with yellow eyes. “Bydd y llys yn byw.” The light fades, and the five’s eyes stop glowing as they drop the rock and run. You see the boys avoid each other at school the next day, and as the last word rings out, Blue corners Adam as he’s riding somewhere on his bicycle.

The video ends.


	2. PART II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I've been gone for so long! Right after I posted the previous chapter, tech week for the production I was in started, and I've been really busy since then! 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this chapter, and I'll try to get the next chapter out a little sooner this time!

**Video 5: Interlude (Winter of Our Youth)**

_ 22 May 2017 _

This video is described as an interlude due to there not being any omnipresent music. The song “Winter of Our Youth” is included as being played over Ronan’s speaker. In this video, the five discuss what happened in the forest, and Blue mentions that her mom told her a story when Blue told her about what happened. Gansey said, “well, it’s what we’ve got.”

In ancient Wales, there existed a King named Leonard Gansey. He was known throughout the land for his eccentric court. Of the four members, half were women, which was unheard of. First was King Gansey’s best friend, the loyal knight Niall Lynch, known as “The Greywaren” to the people. Then there was Eden Parrish, or “The Magician” as she was known to the people. The second woman was Desdemona Blue, known as “Psychic Blue.” Lastly, there was The Ghost. No one knew who he really was. 

For centuries, King Gansey had been at war with the neighboring kingdom. The court rode into battle, and the entire enemy army had been felled except for one man. As King Gansey and Sir Lynch went to kill the man with their swords, he cast a spell onto the king and his court. Eden attempted to stop it, but it was too powerful. This spell cursed the king and his court to, once they had died, to live in the bodies of their descendants. The curse would only be broken once all of them had “suitable” descendents all together. 

Gansey revealed that he knew what the stone had said. The five also talked about their dreams (and Noah’s lack thereof), and came to the conclusion that they were the “suitable descendants” of King Gansey’s court. Throughout the video, Adam mentions that he has a headache. The five go home and sleep. Adam is restless, and eventually wakes up with glowing green eyes.

**Video 6: Send Them Off!**

_ 13 June 2017 _

A sample echoes in a forest, and we finally meet Blue’s family as the music begins. “The Magician has awoken,” a woman says. “We have to wake Blue.” The psychics wake up Blue and they go find the others as Adam stumbles through a forest. The others make their way to the forest. They find Adam as he lays on the ground, on the lyric “Desdemona, won’t you liberate me.” The four manage to knock out Adam and bring him back to Blue’s house. They strap him to a bed with a bunch of belts, which was the funniest thing to see. Adam struggles constantly, and the gang has to figure out what to do. Eventually, Adam opens his mouth, and words come out, but they’re not his words or his voice. 

Adam played the track for me. The voice is one of Blue’s aunts, and it’s calming, but echoey and strange. “Niall,” (that part is not included on the original track) “Your mind exists somewhere altogether different. It lives in a world where feelings simply cannot be defined by words.” Filming this bit was quite strange for everyone, involved or not. 

The music track is played over a loudspeaker for timing, and the “Niall” bit had to be put into the track. Gansey jumped the first time he heard it. When they hear “Niall,” they all turn around to face Adam. Ronan is at the front of their clump, and listens to the ghost voice coming out of Adam. As soon as the voice stops, Ronan’s eyes turn red, and he moves forward, but Gansey stops him. Ronan’s eyes return to their normal color. 

Adam struggles more, his eyes flashing from the unnatural green to his natural color, and back. One of the psychics manages to stop whatever was happening to Adam, and he calms down. As the song fades out, Ronan demands an explanation. Blue’s mother asked if they were told the story of King Gansey. 

Gansey replied “We weren’t sure if that was us or not.” Blue’s mother explained that what happened to Adam was Eden attempting to take control of him. Then, the video ends. 

Adam explained that this song was where they had first thought of the idea of the story behind “The Raven Boys.” “We had already been talking about making it into a story,” Adam said. “We had talked through what the story would be, and apparently it inspired Ronan enough to write a song.” Ronan smirked when Adam said this, and explained “I didn’t really know it was a song about King Gansey until I wrote the line about Desdemona.”

**Video 7: Power**

_ 3 July 2017 _

This video begins the descent into more strange and mystical bits. Adam and Ronan wake up in an empty field. Across the field, two people stand looking at them. Adam and Ronan slowly get closer, and it’s revealed that the two people are Eden Parrish and Niall Lynch. They are played by Adam’s cousin Inez Costa, and Ronan’s older brother Declan Lynch. The video flips to the real world, where Ronan and Adam are looking possessed like Adam was in the last video. Their eyes are glowing green and red respectively, and the video shows more clips of Niall and Eden in their time. They were deeply in love, and it’s also revealed that Eden’s botched spell against their enemy created shadowy beasts that are out to kill the court’s descendants so they can never be free of the curse. The entire band cited this video as their favorite. Ronan said, “It was mostly Declan and Inez doing stuff. It was nice to finally have a f*cking break.” 

However, the director, Henry Cheng, cited “Power” as the hardest video to plan out. “We had to consider how we would tell Niall and Eden’s story, how we could reveal why the court hadn’t been released from their reincarnation cycle, etcetera,” Henry said. “It took a lot of planning.”

In addition, the day the video came out was the day of Adam Parrish’s birthday, so the end of the video contained some grainy footage of the band singing happy birthday to Adam as he blew out some candles on a small cake.

**Video 8: Campus**

_ 23 August 2017 _

The first half of the video consists mostly of scenes in rooms with the band and their respective ancestors. The “rooms” represent their minds. Adam’s is neat, and has many bookshelves, which are filled with books. There are only a few posters, all of Ivy League schools, one of which Adam actually graduated from. “Harvard was great for my education,” Adam admitted. “Not so great for my mental health.” Shortly after graduating, Adam moved to New York City to try and make use of his degree. “I met Ronan and Blue shortly after, and I moved in with Ronan, Gansey, and Noah shortly after. The four of them already had a band together, but they were trying to find a drummer and singer. I told them good luck. Eventually, they caught me singing on the street for tips. They convinced me to join “Band With no Name” as Noah called it.” 

Gansey’s “mind room” is similarly neat, but not as sparse. In fact, it’s decorated almost exactly as his childhood bedroom was. Ronan’s is the stark opposite. It’s dark, messy, and chaotic. “Ronan’s mind room was inspired by himself,” director Henry Cheng remarked. “Dark, messy as f**k, and completely without any form of order.” Blue’s is also slightly messy and chaotic, but in a different way. Crafts, fabrics, sewing supplies, and art is scattered around. A dress form sits in one corner, and multiple tarot decks clutter the desk. 

Noah, since he has no ancestor, has no mind room.

The ancestors are trying to explain something to the others, but they can only speak in images, and only Gansey is trying to listen.

In the real world, the band is trying to find out what to do. Gansey discovers that Noah actually has an ancestor, but he does not exist within his ancestors. Noah’s ancestor floats around like a ghost, following his ancestors from place to place. 

The band decides to go back into the forest where they found the stone the first time, and their ancestors tried to warn them. 

A small cutscene plays- the ancestors at the scene of their cursing. It shows how Eden Parrish’s counter-attack spell released a hoard of spirit-demon-things, hell-bent on continuing the reincarnation cycle of King Gansey and his court. 

As soon as the band understands this, the spirit-demon-things circle them. The video cuts to black.


End file.
